Review Summary: Thin air in music form.
Who here even listens to Barenaked Ladies anymore? Sure, there's something to be said for a band sticking around when arguably the band's most revered member leaves, but since Steven Page's departure, Barenaked Ladies have become nothing more than a vanity project called The Ed Robertson Show. Their 2010 album
All In Good Time was full of nothing but unsubtle and unnecessary shots at Page, and while 2013's
Grinning Streak was a slight improvement and had some decent tunes, it didn't do much tp prove anyone who thought that Barenaked Ladies are Barenaked Ladies in name only without Page wrong. Well, here we are in 2015. Apparently, a new Barenaked Ladies album is something that exists in 2015, it's called
Silverball, bears an album cover as cringeworthy as its name, and features more bland and forgettable tracks that only serve to expand Robertson's already embellished Ego.
The worst thing about
Silverball is that it's just bland, boring and forgettable. It's an album with mostly mid-tempo, 3-minute pseudo-rockers that mostly sound the same, lack anything resembling hooks or catchiness and even worse, go right in one ear and out the other. It's bad enough that we already have three albums that prove that Ed Robertson lacks the required command and strength to lead the band all on his own, but combine that with complete blandness in all sense of the word, lack of memorable music, and the stink of a band stuck even further in an identity crisis, and you have an album so vapid and disconnected that it may as well be thin air in music form. There are a few attempts to spice things up and bring some former glory here- the opening riff to "Hold My Hand" certainly comes to mind, as it probably wouldn't have been out of place on
Maroon, but they're all far and in between, and you'll most likely forget you've even heard them as soon as they've even finished.
And you've probably noticed that already, we've gotten this far into the review without mentoning any of the songs, save for a single measly riff. Well, that's because they're all so bland and lacking anything resembling catchiness or memorability that they just blend into each other at once, and may as well cease to even exist.
Silverball is merely a collection of "grab the money and run" chart hopefuls that don't even have the power or the ability to become anything other than such. At this point, it's unclear if even Mr. Page returning to the band could help restore order, but at least his trademark harmonizing with Robertson would give the songs
something worth shouting about.
